freedom is another word for fire, baby
by FullMetalCrayon
Summary: He lied. Because it wasn't just once. It's never 'just once.' / It's like an addiction, his failures. He even buys himself cake when he makes to one hundred attempts. / Dark.


_So, be warned, this deals with suicide. WARNING WARNING WARNING RIGHT HERE._

_I was thinking about when Bruce talks about shooting himself in the head in the movie, and I just kept thinking, "A superhero tried to kill themselves. What a sad, sad world."_

_So here's what that led to, a character study turned exceptionally dark suicide story._

_I'm not sure 'enjoy' is the right word to use here, when talking about a suicide story. Read it with interest, I guess?_

* * *

The first time, it had been surreal.

A bottle of pills that he wasn't even sure were legal. A bottle of whiskey that burned hotter than the fire inside his mind, and it felt perfect, the heat sliding down his throat as he took not one, not two, not three, but all one hundred little blue pills and washed them down with whiskey.

A hundred little circles of freedom floating down his throat, chased by the devil.

As it turns out, the Hulk is a very, very, very angry drunk.

He will never forgive himself for the little girl he killed.

* * *

The second time, it had been painful.

He was at wit's end, the Hulk taptaptapping with too-strong fingers on the side of his consciousness, begging, pleading, _roaring_ to be set free. Bruce knew he couldn't do it in the city, couldn't even go out in the city where a careless horn honk might give the Other Guy the lapse in control he needed. But he knew he couldn't stay here like this, gripping the metal of his lab tables so hard he swore he could see the imprints of his fingers in them, with the monster (not tapping, beating now, s_creaming_) in his head, shouts of anger and destruction ringing in his ears so loud he couldn't hear himself breathe.

So, slowly, carefully, and breathing what he hoped were deep breaths, he picked up the nearest scalpel spread over his carefully organized workstation, looked at it calmly, and then dragged it all the way through the skin of his right arm, shoulder to wrist.

It felt like damnation. He couldn't stop the small hiss that ground its way out through his lips, because it _hurts_, but he thinks it's a nice feeling.

A little like freedom.

Then, after blinking stars and tears and darkness from his eyes, he picked up the scalpel (he dropped it when he first wave of fire hit and startled him), noting calmly, just how pretty and r_ed_ the end was, and how much he liked the color red, idly thinking he might buy a couple of shirts that color next time he visited town. (he wasn't stupid. He knew he was going into shock.)

(He thought it might be the only way, so he breathed a nice deep breath.)

With a shaking hand, he held the scalpel tight, and did it to the other arm, curses spilling out like dirty water from an unused faucet.

Bruce just stood and watched the blood bubble and run down his arms into pools onto the dingy grey of the lab table.

It burned, it burned like the devil. The sun rose in his eyes and set again, burning holes in his mind with the power. He became a literal monster, nothing more, a screaming, burning mass of flesh and bone.

Bruce liked it, the screaming, the bleeding. It was…therapeutic.

One thing he didn't know, though, is the Hulk hated screaming. Or loud noises.

Would he ever get over the three men he crushed to death and left to burn to death in a car on the interstate, just because The Other Guy hated noise?

Probably not.

He just knew from then on out he would speak as little as possible.

* * *

The third time is so cold he sometimes still feels it, deep in his bones, when it's dark and he's alone.

He'd gone to the beach. A nice, sunny beach, dappled with hot summertime sunbeams, swarmed by families playing in the salty water. A place where any _normal_ person could relax, sink their toes in the sand and feel the waves playfully lick at his toes.

But he was never going to be normal, was he?

The thought itself brought hysterical laughter bubbling to his lips.

Instead of wasting his afternoon, dipping into the inviting blue of the ocean or stretching out on a towel to read a book, all he could do was watch the other families. See that little boy over there, Bruce? The one with the smile, and the floppy blonde hair, and the big family? You could kill him, Brucey Boy, with one little twitch.

Like the last little one you killed.

See that woman over there, Bruce, tanning peacefully on a towel, trashy romance novel in hand? You, without really even needing to move your fingers, could crush her.

You're a murderer. _A murderer_.

He didn't even notice how white his knuckles had gone until the lifeguard came over and tapped him hesitantly, gently on the shoulder. Which turns out to be an incredibly bad idea for the lifeguard, because Bruce was unfocused, and the world goes a little green and he idly thinks about the color red before suddenly everything is green and he's got the lifeguard's arm in a vice grip, so hard he can almost feel the bones shattering.

Which is when he jumped back, wild-eyed, and just stared at the lifeguard, who clutched at his arm and smiled weakly. "Hey…Hey there, big fella, you alright?"

_Big fella. You are a big fella, aren't you, when you're green? When you almost snap off innocent people's arms because you were surprised?_

And Bruce barely managed to squeak out a word that he hopes is some form of yes before he's running, kicking up sand beneath his feet as he flies down the beach because the monster was knockknockknocking to the beat of his heart and he knew wasn't going to stop, never going to stop; it would go on and on and on until it wasn't a knock it was a pound and then it's not a pound it's a smashing, smashing down walls and barriers and then it's the Green Guy, and he's free.

So Bruce ran, and his mind hadn't exactly caught up with his legs when he noticed he was breathing heavy and he couldn't see anyone anymore, just sand and blue and blue. He was relieved and frightened at the same time; what if they come looking for him?

What if he hurt them?

But then he saw the pier, the lovely, lonely-looking pier and thought, wow. It could be so _easy._

And it is, almost.

He started frantically picking up any rocks he could find and shoving them in his pockets. The solution was right here, so simple, so _right in front of him_ that he couldn't believe he missed it.

The Hulk started knocking louder, so Bruce picked up rocks faster.

When he's content his pockets (front and back) are satisfactorily filled with heavy rocks (he can barely move down the pier), he waddles, straining against the weight until he stands at the end of it, just looking at the blue, and breathing shallow breaths.

The blue of the water mixed with the tantalizing colors of red in his mind and then suddenly, all he can see is green where blue should be and he doesn't even doubt himself this time, just throws his body forward and he's fallingfallingfalling and he can't breathe, can't feel his lungs and the water is green and he's so helpless-

And he loves it.

On the other hand, Hulk is not appreciative of drowning.

He ends up actually tearing off that lifeguard's arm, in the end.

He never goes near big bodies of water again if he can help it.

* * *

The fourth time is so desperate it almost makes him laugh.

It's dark, and quiet, and all Bruce can hear are his short, labored breaths and a clock ticktickticking the night away.

That's when he sees it, in the low light of a lamp he's got burning, the sinister glint of light off of metal. At it hits him like a ton of bricks, this revelation, and he can feel the Hulk stirring a little beneath the surface at the thought, raising a fist to pound at Bruce's subconscious in anger.

He doesn't care.

It's a pretty gun, he thinks, as he takes it out of the drawer and admires the simplicity of it. It's shiny and metal and hard all over, and oh-so-deadly. SHIELD issued, SHIELD approved. It's probably got bullets that explode into lightning and fire lazers, or something.

Bruce chuckles softly, then catches his breath. He knows little about guns (he's already a bomb set to self-destruct. Why would you need a gun if you're already exploding?) but from what he can tell, it's loaded.

He knows enough to take the safety off, and hears a soft _click _as he does so, and then he just _looks_.

He looks at the shiny metal of the gun, at the dark wood of the floor, at the purple of the old, torn-to-pieces jeans he wears. He just looks, like a man in line at the gallows, like it's the last thing he will ever see.

And suddenly, in the dark, alone, and holding a gun, the world seems so bitterly beautiful he can't take it so he puts the gun in his mouth, and waits.

He doesn't have to wait long. He may run away from problems, but Bruce Banner is certainly not a coward, and his finger finds the trigger easily.

It burns, hot and sudden and moving and fire and _fuck_, it reminds him of the first time, and it's like reminiscing.

A bittersweet end to a bitter man.

That is, until the Hulk rips the bullet out of the back of his head, and precedes to smash everything in the cabin to pieces.

When he dust finally settles, and it's just him, naked Bruce sitting in a cloud of smashed wood and plastic, he just starts to cry.

And he can't stop for a long, long time.

* * *

The last time comes, shockingly, during the highest point of his life. Oh, sure, he's tried plenty of things since the gun incident- the only one he hopes his teammates ever find out about- but they're all really just a way to get the Hulk of his head, if only for a couple impossible seconds of pain.

He'd lost count after about one hundred attempts. He toys with the idea of throwing a happy 100th anniversary party for himself. It's a little morbid, but he goes and buys cake anyway, and sits alone in his lab and eats three pieces.

He's so scarred, and bloody, and broken, looking in a mirror almost burns.

It's a great thing the Hulk has healing powers, huh?

(His skin is still as smooth as it was before the scalpels, and he hates it.)

(Didn't he deserve battle scars?)

After joining the Avengers, though, the Hulk got to be green and not so jolly pretty regularly, and it soothed the almost constant tapping at the frayed ends of his mind, because the Hulk was free and mostly contained. His teammates, while dysfunctional and all-together _terrifying,_ keep him in line the only ways they know how, with snarky remarks and bad science jokes and actual, actual concern for his wellbeing.

It was little bit hard for Bruce to understand, that this ragtag bunch of broken people wanted him as an addition to the bunch, but he got used to it, because he had to.

What was he going to do? Shoot himself in the head?

(The line sounds hilarious in his mind.)

Until, one day, while blankly sketching a new model of a microscope for Tony to try and invent and eating soggy cornflakes in front of the TV in the living room, the channel on the news, his head snapped up, because he heard the _word_.

The TV said it.

The TV said, "murderer."

His hand started to twitch, and he dropped the pen hard on the glass table, causing a resounding ping before grabbing the table with both of his hands, and gripping like he couldn't ever let go, like it was his lifejacket, and he was drowning.

(Maybe he was.)

It was a news story on the Avengers, about how in their latest battle against what Tony affectionately dubbed as the "Shirtless Wonder" (he likes to throw around explosives, cackle a bit, and then take off his shirt), the team had let a daycare facility collapse on fifty preschool children while seeing to their mentally unstable teammate, the Hulk.

And it was true.

He'd hulked out, v_ery_ angry that the Shirtless Wonder even dared to throw explosives near a damn daycare- and started going on a rampage, picking up cars to throw, people, ripping trees up out of the ground, anything to stop someone casually tossing around explosives (the Hulk may not be the smartest one, but he's good at being angry, and _damn_ if it doesn't make him angry that this villain of the week would throw explosives at children)-

So there the team was, dealing with a rage-filled rage monster, when a bomb detonated.

(Just more bloodstains on his already scarlet hands, he guesses.)

All of the team was still coping with it, the fact that they couldn't always save everyone. Steve just stared at his hands sometimes, blue eyes tired, and Bruce knew what he was thinking, about the color red, but couldn't ever open his mouth to tell him it was okay.

Because Bruce's hands were so much redder, so darker, but it seemed a lackluster pacifier, so he just left him to it.

Tony was probably the worst, because he just babbled, forced enthusiasm rolling off him like waves crashing onto an abandoned beach as he dithered on about this and about that and about the woman he just banged and robots and no one could take it, but no one wanted it to stop.

It filled the empty air around them and sometimes, it felt okay.

(Bruce elected not to tell anybody that when he passed Tony lab one day, he heard crying, and looked in to see Tony hunched over a picture of the children they'd all let die.)

(It seemed best to keep quiet. After years of practice, he was good at that.)

Then, on the TV, tons of people come on and give their two cents about why the Hulk was bad and dangerous and should be put down and taken off the team, and they use the word so many times it starts as a mantra in Bruce's head, rolling around until it's all he can hear, all he can taste, and he doesn't know he's shattered the table glass until he feels his hands bleeding because the sound made him _see_.

It was like looking into a clear mirror after thirty years of it being dirty. He could see himself, and his true being, and his teammates-turned-friends, and how shattered the world looked from the outside.

But mostly, he could see _them._

He saw a little girl's long, white-blonde hair starting to turn a brownish, red color as it soaked up the puddle of blood she was laying in, her broken body curled and mangled against the wall the Hulk had slapped her into.

He saw three college boys on a road trip, one talking on the phone to a girl and the other two singing loudly to the radio, being thrown impossibly high into the air, crashing back down to earth in some mangled heap, trapping the three riders long enough to let the fire take them, burn them, and spit them out as ash.

He saw an innocent lifeguard, just trying to be attentive to all the beachgoers, startling a strange man and later having to pay his arm for it.

And he breaks. Because there's always some little piece left of someone to shatter, and this one finally does.

And, with his still bloody hands covered in glass, he smashes the television with his bare human hands, and then he screams.

He hasn't screamed in so long it feels guttural, unnatural, but he keeps it going, and the high-pitching keening sounds like the death of something.

(And maybe it's the death of Bruce Banner.)

He screams and he throws things and he's not even The Other Guy, it's just him, and he realizes the fuse finally reached the bomb and this is the explosion.

Tony comes running, quickly followed by Steve and Natasha, but he doesn't stop. He can't, just looks at them and screams like he hasn't ever screamed before, and they stare at him wide-eyed, Steve radioing in backup.

(But you can't stop a nuclear missile mid mushroom cloud and put it back in the container.)

He throws the shattered remains of the coffee table at Tony and if he hit his mark (which, by the groan and loud thud that follows, he's almost certain it does) because Tony isn't suited up and Tony is just a human and Bruce wants to make someone besides himself burn from the inside out and he looks up and sees Natasha but the only thing he can think of is the little girl.

He still hadn't transformed. He couldn't even feel the Hulk, tapping is rhythm into his brain, and for a brief moment he wondered if the Hulk was truly a coward, and couldn't face the screaming when Bruce needed him the most.

(Because Bruce needed to smash, didn't he? Because he was brilliant at smashing and breaking.)

The high pitched, resulting laughter that followed throwing the coffee table made him feel so alive in all the right places. Steve tried to help Tony up and make sure he wasn't injured while Natasha and Bruce waltz as she tries to subdue him. Natasha dances with knives, and Bruce dances with agony, and its the most intricate dance any of them have ever witnessed.

And really, it's just like a dance, he thinks, somewhere deep in his head. She gives and he takes and he gives and she takes and there's knifes and screaming and laughter and Bruce can't find the Hulk when he needs him, to bust out, to destroy.

He doesn't even think when, after another of Natasha's knives lodges in the wall beside him, he jumps out the window, throwing his force against the glass, feeling it shatter, feeling it _break_, and reveling in the discovery of how easy it was to break things.

He doesn't even have time to smile when he hits the pavement, and at the very last second, the Hulk emerges.

(It felt so good, the falling, the uncertainty. He'd have to try it again sometime.)

So he isn't dead. Fine.

He just feels the burning and the pain everywhere and for once, the Hulk can't take that away from him.

He hears a SHIELD ambulance arrive and Tony (who, was apparently living- Bruce found himself to be overwhelmed with relief, because if his hands got any darker red they just might stain enough to show) runs over to him, breathless and confused, while Steve barks orders and holds Tony back and it's chaos that he's created here, real chaos.

He loves it.

He's finally starting to understand the big green guy.

Even though he should, Bruce doesn't stop to think about the therapy that this will entail, the marks on the record, the _repercussions- _but he's always been good at living in the past, not the future, and he doesn't think the time to start is him curled up in a bloody ball, surrounded by people he just tried to kill.

He doesn't think about anything, really, just lays there and hums because it hurts everywhere so intensely, that it almost feels like freedom.

He only wonders, in the rational part of his brain that still functions, why it took him this many tries just to jump out of a window.

* * *

Thanks for reading.


End file.
